Smart mobility solutions provider ioki has announced that it has become a technology partner on the EU’s Autonomous Vehicles to Evolve to a New Urban Experience (AVENUE) flagship project.
AVENUE, an EU-funded project under Horizon 2020 which began on May 1, 2018, and will last four years, aims to design and carry out full-scale demonstrations of urban transport automation by deploying, for the first time worldwide, fleets of autonomous minibuses in low to medium demand areas of four European demonstrator cities (Geneva, Lyon, Copenhagen and Luxembourg) and later on in three replicator cities.
“With ioki we gain an experienced partner and come a big step closer to our goal of making Europe a global thought and technology leader in the use of connected and autonomous mobility. We are looking forward to working with ioki and to launch the first autonomous shuttles in Geneva,” said Professor Dimitri Konstantas, AVENUE project coordinator at the University of Geneva, who is responsible for managing the €22m EU project.
German software company ioki will provide its specially developed technical interface for the project. The interface creates the prerequisite for combining autonomous driving and on-demand booking. In addition, the ioki software enables deep integration into the existing public transport system and MaaS apps.
“ioki’s vision is smart, integrated transport – whether driver-based or autonomous. We are pleased that we can contribute our know-how in the field of autonomous driving to this future-oriented EU project. With the findings from the AVENUE project, we are setting the course for autonomous and connected mobility in Europe,” said Dr Michael Barillère-Scholz, managing director of ioki.
Deutsche Bahn subsidiary ioki has been pioneering autonomous driving in public spaces since it was founded in 2017. The first autonomous vehicle on German roads has been on the road since 2017 using the company’s technology. In 2019, another autonomous milestone was reached with the connection of the autonomous vehicle to rail transport. Ioki’s smart platform also enables the first on-demand autonomous connection in Europe: in Karlsruhe, passenger operations for self-driving shuttles on demand started in May 2021.
To find out more about the AVENUE project, click here.
